Cold

by Robert J. Crane

  “How many meta crooks have you cuffed?” Man, it was uncomfortable being under her gaze, those eyes just burning through me. “How many have you killed?”

  “Uh, none on the second one,” I said, smacking my suddenly-dry lips together. Had the desert gotten to me? My mouth felt parched. It hadn’t a moment ago. “And on the first…uh…one…half?”

  “How do you cuff half a person?” Veronika’s voice exceeded meta-low range and went into the human whisper decibel level for a second. “Did you catch the one-armed man?”

  “I don’t know who that is, but no,” I said. “I helped Augustus catch a criminal meta in Nebraska about two months ago.”

  “But none on your own?” Why was she staring so hard at me?

  “No,” I said. I felt like I was sweating, or wanted to, but there wasn’t enough humidity in the air to allow it.

  “This is a no-smoking establishment, isn’t it?” She looked around like a cigarette was going to drop out of nowhere onto the table. “I don’t even smoke anymore, but I mean—I feel like I need to, right now. Did Nevada legalize weed? Because I need a hit of that.” She darted a gaze at me. “Actually, you do, too. Desperately.”

  “I do?” I asked. “Uh, why?”

  “Because this is no longer about you being uptight or lacking confidence, Olivia,” Veronika said, “although both of those things are most definitely a problem. You need to get drunk, stoned, laid—maybe even hit something stronger.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Now it felt hot in here. Hot and confined, like she’d pushed the table closer to me. Had she? I felt pinned in.

  “Have you ever been drunk?” she asked, leaning in again.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I had two margaritas at Applebee’s one time?”

  “Ever been stoned?” She wouldn’t stop staring. Why wouldn’t she stop staring at me?

  “No.” I stared at the grungy yellow tabletop.

  “Have you ever had sex?”

  “That’s totally inappropriate and not the point of…anything,” I said, and God, was I burning up.

  “You haven’t, have you?” She sounded…not gleeful, but her voice was higher, even at the meta-low range she was speaking in.

  “I—I—”

  “Hey, dudette, it’s okay; you had an unconventional childhood.” She tried to pat my hand, but hers ricocheted off. She took this in stride, getting control of it after a brief flight in which it looked like she was raising it to ask a question in class. “Why don’t we do this? Let’s eat, settle the check, touch base with the Vegas PD, and if they don’t have anything for us, we go cruising for dudes—if you’re into that. I’m not much for it myself, but I promise you I am the best wingwoman you will ever have, and there are like a billion groomsmen in this town looking to hit something, if you know what I mean. Even at this hour, I promise we can find some action on the Strip. We’ll get you cleaned up, buy you something nice, and hit a target-rich environment. I can promise you, in this town, you will come up absolute aces in the dude department. I can get you in bed with a ten, if you want—”

  “I don’t want—”

  “I’m just saying you need some drilling done. It would make a world of difference, really work the kinks out, maybe loosen some of that tension you carry.”

  “No, I don’t—”

  “Add in some weed, you’d be feeling good in no time.”

  “No.” My eyes were squeezed tight. “No, Veronika, I don’t want—”

  “If you’re worried about losing your virginity to a random dude, trust me,” she said, voice getting closer as she leaned in. “It’s way easier than doing it with someone you care about. Random dudes are a dime a dozen. People you can actually fall in love with? Well, they’re rarer. Not diamonds-rare, because diamonds aren’t actually that rare, but—”

  My face was buried in my hands. “I’m not a virgin, Veronika,” I said, from the depths of my sweaty fingers. I didn’t dare so much as crack them to let any light in. “I was raised in…I mean…where I was raised…Tracy’s dad, he…he and Tracy…” My throat caught, and I couldn’t say anything else.

  There was a long, long silence, and I felt a gentle hand brushing mine. “Yeah,” Veronika whispered, and I cracked my fingers apart enough to see now she was the one looking at the table. “I had a feeling about that.” She glanced up at me, and the quality about her eyes was different now. “I’m sorry I pushed.”

  “You…already knew?” There was a sick feeling in my gut, and I would have sprinted out the door, maybe without even opening it first, if not for my legs feeling like lead, and with all the blood sapped out of them.

  “I suspected,” Veronika said, and now her eyes left the tabletop again, but her finger traced a strange pattern around it. She wore a funny smile, one that curled the corner of her mouth. “The way you act, some of the things you do…they seem a little familiar. Because for me it was this guy I worked with when I first got out of college. I knew I didn’t feel anything for him, but I didn’t have any friends in the area at the time. So I went out with him for a beer after work. I just thought we were drinking, having a good time. But his definition of a good time and mine…worlds apart.” She spread her hands from each other like two birds taking flight in opposite directions.

  I tried to say something but my dry mouth just flapped uselessly. “I’m…sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, so was he, after I figured out what he did the next morning,” she said, nodding. “We didn’t know what a ‘roofie’ was back then. You kids are way more on the ball these days.”

  “Roger,” I said, barely able to meet her eyes, and only through extraordinary effort. “That was Tracy’s dad. He…” Why wouldn’t my mouth produce moisture? It felt like I’d been the one to land in the desert last night, and face-first at that, mouth wide open, swallowing every grain of sand in the process. “Of all the people he had under his control in the cloister—”

  “Cult,” Veronika said. “Or prison camp, if you prefer. I saw it.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t a village.”

  “Whatever it was,” I said, “I was his favorite. It’s why he sent Tracy and the others to bring me back after I’d escaped.” I brushed my hands over my face, felt the smooth skin around my lips, wished I had a wet napkin to brush them with, to wet them—and to just clean off because I felt dirty. Again.

  “One of those kinds,” Veronika said, nodding along. “I love killing those kinds of guys. It’s so refreshing.”

  “I did kill him, technically,” I said. “Though Reed helped.” My eyes were dry, too, and that was good, if a little surprising. Usually thinking about Roger had the opposite effect. But I was in public, and Veronika was here, and for some reason it didn’t feel like it usually did. It didn’t feel good either, but…

  Something about her telling her own story? It took some of the jagged glass out of that wound. I couldn’t have explained why it did, not even if I had to, but it did make me feel just the tiniest bit better.

  “Good for you,” Veronika said, and she cracked a slow smile.

  I nodded, then looked away. “It didn’t help.” I stared out the wide, front panel windows at the parking lot. An old grey van was pulling out, a middle-aged couple in the front seat arguing. “I still wake up sometimes at night, screaming, launching things every which way…” I looked back at her. “Because I wake up thinking, ‘He’s got me.’ Again.”

  “It gets easier,” she said. “Over time. Not ever ‘easy’, I would say, but…it does get ‘easier’. Not sure life is ever ‘easy’, in all its pain and suffering and whatnot, but…it fades.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I want you to know two things,” Veronika said, looking over my shoulder. The server was on her way over with our breakfasts, tray laden with food. “One—you’re not alone in this, okay?” She patted my hand.

  “Okay.” I glanced over my shoulder again, not really sure how to take that, so I just sort of brushed it off. The server was almost here
. “What’s the other?”

  Veronika just smiled, staring right at me. “If you can use that stuff you’ve got burning inside of you—control it, harness it, make it your bitch instead of letting it make you its?” She sort of lightly shrugged, like all the heavy conversation was just sloughing off her shoulders. “You’re gonna be a damned powerhouse, Olivia Brackett. You’ll knock ’em all dead.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and it didn’t matter, because Veronika turned to the server and smiled, and bantered, as the lady delivered our food. I didn’t hear a word of what they said, though, because I was still thinking about what the hell she’d meant by that last thing.

  53.

  Sienna

  I stood on the banks of the mighty Mississippi, hot sun glaring down on me, wet to the skin under my FBI suit, thinking if I’d just pulled the trigger when the assassin turned her back to me, this would all be over now.

  New Orleans PD and Louisiana State Police troopers swarmed around me, doing—well, I didn’t know what they were doing. I stared across the river, wondering what I should be doing now that I’d let the shooter escape.

  “What was that name again?” Burkitt’s voice cut across my thoughts, knocking me out of a fixation with the rippling, brown surface of the Mississippi. He was a few steps behind me, messing around with his phone.

  “Emily Glover,” I said, blinking a couple of times as I looked to the hazy, far side of the river. No sign of the shooter over there. “Of Baton Rouge.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.” He shook his head. “I’m not finding anything in a general search. I called it in. We’ll see what the office guys come up with.”

  “The shooter’s her sister,” I said, turning my back on the river and folding my arms around me. My shirt was dripping sweat, and I caught a glimpse of my hotel less than a half mile away, the tower sticking up beyond the buildings that hemmed the Riverwalk in from the city at large. “And I’m detecting a real, ‘I Spit On Your Grave,’ Warrington-done-her-wrong quality to this lady’s motive.”

  Burkitt made a face. “You think that’s a literal thing? Like Warrington hit this girl’s cabin—”

  “Not literal, no,” I said, rolling my eyes at Burkitt’s failure to keep up. “There’s just…I don’t know, a creepy kind of sexual vibe to it. Maybe I’m just reading that into it myself.”

  Burkitt seemed to pause and think before answering. “You could well be right. Warrington’s, what? Mid-forties? And how old was this shooter?”

  “Under thirty. I’d peg her closer to mid-twenties, but some of that could be that metahumans don’t age like normal people.”

  “And they’re twins?”

  “They sure look alike, comparing her to the composite they made from the body.” I shook my head. “I bet that’ll give Holloway fits, if they actually are twins.”

  Burkitt’s facial expression did not improve; it turned into a deeper cringe. “That’s an uncomfortable age difference between that body we dug up and the governor.” I hadn’t noticed, but he’d lowered his voice sometime in our conversation, probably owing to all the troopers and local PD around us.

  “Plus, Warrington has been married for like twenty years and has a family,” I said, keeping my own voice low. “In case we needed to add some more cringe factor to this.”

  Holloway came sliding out of the sea of trooper hats. “Warrington’s out of danger now,” he said, lip curled in disgust, though whether that sprang from the current situation or some deep dislike of the city of Baton Rouge, I didn’t know.

  “Not at the local chicken joint?” I asked. “Because I could really go for a fried drummy right now.” Holloway and Burkitt both guffawed under their breath. “You think he can keep his glory-seeking head down for a day or two now while we piece things together and wrap this up?”

  Holloway was clearly amused. “You really think we’re going to wrap this up that quick now that you let the shooter get away?”

  “I don’t think we’re allowed to shoot fleeing people in the back,” I said, completely deadpan. “I mean, I can check the FBI manual, but I’m pretty sure a suspect has to present an imminent, reasonable threat of death or physical harm to another person in order to justify the use of lethal force.”

  “A metahuman always presents that threat,” Holloway said.

  “She never once used her ice powers in an offensive manner, never reached for her rifle,” I said. “Sorry. I can’t square that.”

  Holloway shook his head. “If you’d taken your chance here and gunned her down, this would be over.” He ran his sleeve over his brow, wiping away the moisture gathering there. It had to be in the mid to high 80s now. In freaking October. “And speaking just for myself, I’m ready to get the hell out of this town. It’s like America’s crotch down here.”

  “Then you, being a giant taint, should feel right at home,” I said. “Though I think, on behalf of the people of New Orleans, they’d find you completely unpalatable. Also, it was twins.” Ignoring his aggravated look, I turned my attention to Burkitt, just as a slight breeze came in off the river. “Did you check the missing persons database for that Emily Glover name?”

  Burkitt nodded. “Nobody reported her missing, either to federal or local authorities.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking it over. “Now the big question—did Warrington have something to do with her actual death? Or did he do something to her that led her down the path she went, which culminated in her death?”

  “What the hell, Nealon?” Holloway seemed to burst. “You can’t accuse a sitting governor of that kind of thing just because some dumb blonde takes a potshot at him and spins some sob story about her sister to get you to holster your gun!”

  “Look, I got the measure of this other Glover sister when I was standing across from her,” I said. “She’s disciplined, focused, angry as hell, and—this is going to sound like a pun—cold about it. Like every angry action is dulled by a ten-foot-deep sheet of ice. She’s not acting hastily in this.” I rested fingers on my chin and mouth, finding plenty of moisture to try and wipe away on my upper lip. “Which is worrisome.”

  “Cold and calculating is a hell of a lot less fun to deal with than hot and crazy,” Burkitt said, nodding along. “The dumb ones are always too amped up to think, too ready to make a move to plan it through all the way.” He shrugged. “If she’s that smart, the best move would be to submerge for six months and wait for things to cool off before making another play.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “We can’t give her that time, though. I should have asked her why she’s so dedicated to killing Warrington from a distance. It’s so different from most of these revenge motives, you know?”

  Holloway nodded. “Most of them want to be up close and personal. Give a nice account of how they were done wrong.” He looked down at his hands. “See the blood on their fingers or something.”

  “After this clusterfutz,” Burkitt said, “she should be looking at every future opportunity to hit Warrington like the heavens are going to open up and hell’s going to rain down. If she’s got half a brain.”

  “I can confirm she’s got more than half a brain,” I said. “And also that she’s thinking—mostly.” I looked back over the Mississippi again. “But she is angry. And maybe getting a little desperate to finish this.”

  “You think now that she’s got the scent of her prey in her nostrils,” Holloway said, “she ain’t going to give him up that easy? Dog with a bone?”

  “Something like that,” I said. I looked at Holloway. “Have you talked to Shaw?”

  He seemed to slump instantly, eyes rolling in pure annoyance. “You want me to call the office for you and tell the boss man why you didn’t end this before it could turn into an actual assassination?”

  “Would you? Because that’d be great.” I patted him on the shoulder, my arm at maximum extension so I wouldn’t have to come any closer to him or have him misinterpret my gesture for more than it was—which was me being
massively condescending. And maybe a little emotionally extortionate, given that I still had last night to hold over his dumb ass.

  Holloway grunted, teeth clamped together. “Fine,” he managed to grind out, and he slunk away into the crowd.

  Burkitt watched him go. “I can’t decide if he feels guilty for what he tried to pull on you last night, or he just worries about his employment. Either way, it’s like a personality transplant every time it comes up.”

  “His personality needs a transplant,” I said. “It’s been growing in the rich soil of arrogant douchebaggery for entirely too long. It needs to take root in humility and gentlemanly behavior for a while.” My phone buzzed, and when I looked at it, it was a local number. “Hello?” I answered it.

  “Sienna!” Michelle Cheong’s sunny voice came blaring out of the other end of the line. “How are you doing? Weather treating you all right?”

  “I’m a little pissed off and a little peckish,” I said, “and not in much of a mood to deal with your horseshit right now, lady. What do the Triads want from me today?”

  “Why, I don’t want anything from you at all,” she said, sounding mock-offended. “But I did think, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a chance to talk?’ Maybe share a meal, take the edge off your hunger.”

  I stiffened, my brow turning into a furrowed line. “What would we talk about?” Burkitt was staring just as intently at me.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Michelle said, not fooling anyone for a minute with her innocent act. “Little things. Yoga, maybe? You look like you could use something to de-stress.”

  “I don’t have time for this—” I started to say.

  “Wait, I know what we could talk about.” Her delivery was note perfect, hooking me right as I was about to hang up, her voice treading the line between innocence and sincerity. “How about…Emily Glover?”

  I froze, the air sticking in my lungs. “Okay,” I said, once I got my thoughts back around me.